COUTE QUE COUTE: 04/01/10

Rudolf Stingel LIVE, 2010 / Installationsansicht 4 / Foto: David von Becker / © Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie

Rudolf Stingel.
Live

Intended to transform the architecture’s character of Mies van der Rohe’s infamously known Neue Nationalgallerie the team around Udo Kittelmann now displays a room filling installation: Rudolf Stingel. Live.

At grade the South-Tyrol born artist installed an 19th century inspired Indian carpet that embraces the whole room. Its original ornament and graphic appearance has been translated into modulations of black, white and gray. The floor ornament – which overall character reminds you of badly printed jpegs from the world wide web – together with the opulent chandelier hanging off the ceiling account for the focussed reinterpretation of van der Rohe’s architecture. The well-known simplicity and sparingness of the modern temple is ought to change towards an Oriental imbued cultural environment that lives from „the desire of something different“ – as the artist Stingel states. Mies van der Rohe’s favoured sobriety has been replaced by something other.

If that was one of Mies van der Rohe’s intentions? No one dares to say.

If you are a fan of Gerhard Richter – in fact the easily accessible works of him such as „Seestücke“, you will fancy Stingel’s limited display of four wide formatted oil paintings in the basement. The basis of these hyperrealistic black and white paintings is photo footage of his father and – as told – a photo of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner which he shot looking out of the shed where he committed suicide in 1938. The foremost decorative paintings map the view upon the mountains of Meran and Davos – the native country of the 1956 born artist Stingel. In acribic manner Stingel’s team even transfered tiny scratches of the original photos into the actual paintings. They are pretty. That was it.

Rudolf Stingel / »Staffelalp« (nach Ernst Ludwig K.), 2008 & Ohne Titel, 2009 / Öl auf Leinwand / 335 x 460 cm / © Rudolf Stingel

Moderne Zeiten.
Die Sammlung 1900-1945

It seems that there is a revolutionary notion about everything Neue Nationalgallerie is doing at the moment.

The reinvention and utterly new presentation of the permanent collection is no exception. As SZ quotes they reinvented arts history in a completely new way: They changed the narrative of the first half of our century. It is no longer the year of 1933 – the moment when the NAZI-regime took over – that ends classical modern art’s history; it is 1945. By showing black and white reproductions of the original art pieces the permanent collection lost during the action Entartete Kunst in 1937 the team bravely underlines the weakness of the permanent collection. Transparancy instead of closeness about the losses.
It does no longer try to show the main path. It furthermore vividly shows how different artisitic opinions and artistic values can take place at the same time. That modernity found an ending in itself – that is the main tone of the inventive new presentation of the permanent collection.

Rudolf Stingel. Live. is displayed until 24th of May
Moderne Zeiten. Die Sammlung 1900-1945 ist shown from 12th of March

NEUE NATIONALGALERIE BERLIN Website
RUDOLF STINGEL. LIVE Website

Text Marco Hümmer
(Guest author for CQC)